Northern Missouri prosecutor drops flag burning case

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Prosecutors have dropped the final remaining charge against a man accused of burning, spitting and stomping on an American flag during a Fourth of July celebration in north-central Missouri.

Bradley S. Stubbs, 23, of Chillicothe, initially faced misdemeanor counts of disturbing the peace and flag desecration after the fray this summer at his brother-in-law's Chillicothe home.

The disturbing the peace charge was dropped Monday. The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri, which represented Stubbs, had argued the charge was unconstitutional because Stubbs was exercising his First Amendment rights when he yelled profanities about America and the flag.

"To charge someone with disturbing the peace on the facts of this case is ridiculous," said ACLU attorney Doug Bonney on Wednesday.

The ACLU wrote in a court filing that Stubb's brother-in-law yelled and threatened to punch Stubbs after seeing him burning the flag in a vacant lot. A partygoer reported that Stubbs said, "I have every right I need to burn the flag." The brother-in-law told Stubbs to leave, and the two men never touched, the ACLU said.

The ACLU said the Supreme Court has "consistently held that onlookers' hostile reactions to protected speech cannot serve as a viable basis for a criminal prosecution."

The flag desecration charge was dismissed July 25. The next day, the county's prosecuting attorney, Adam Warren, told law enforcement in a memo that the Missouri statute barring flag desecration won't stand up to Constitutional scrutiny.

The statute, passed in 1980, makes it a misdemeanor to "purposefully and publicly" mutilate the U.S. or Missouri flag. But a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court ruling protects the action under the First Amendment.

Warren wrote in the memo that he didn't want to "waste our limited resources fighting a battle already lost."

Bonney said the ACLU of Eastern Missouri is currently challenging the constitutionality of the state's flag desecration statute in a civil case filed after a Cape Girardeau man was charged with the crime. That charge was later dropped.

Police said Frank L. Snider was found trying to burn an American flag when police responded to a call of a disturbance between neighbors in the 900 block of South Benton Street in October 2009. The Cape Girardeau City Council earlier this year repealed a city ordinance prohibiting flag desecration in response to the incident.

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster became involved in Snider's lawsuit over the summer, defending the state law prohibiting purposefully damaging an American flag.